Chapter nine, Perception is a choice, from “You are What you Love,” by Vaishali
Perception is the magic carpet that either elevates us into Heaven or plummets us into hell. Perception is how we behold the divine in everything and everyone, or how the relentlessly tight grasp of hell demolishes us. Perception is a gift of free will from Heaven. Where we focus our attention determines whether we freely return perception to its rightful place, Heaven, or whether we surrender it to hell. We choose on a moment–to-moment basis.
We do not choose according to our experiences or what our parents may have taught us. Nor do we choose according to how much money we have. We choose according to our Ruling Love, because it is our Ruling Love that creates our experiences. It is what we are giving our attention to that determines the outcome of what we have learned here. It is what we do with our love that is our true wealth, security, and happiness.
To illustrate the power of perception, consider the story of two children who grew up with alcoholic parents. One child grew up to be a teetotaler. The other child grew up to be an alcoholic. When asked why they chose the path that they did, they both gave the same response, “With parents like that, what else could I be?”
Dr. Phil McGraw, on his television program, The Dr. Phil Show, uses and interesting technique while working with a guest. He directly addresses the person’s perception of self. Dr. Phil will walk the person through a complete examination of their perception. One of his guests was re-creating great turmoil within the family due to the deliberate, insensitive overspending of the family’s financial resources. Dr. Phil walked this person through her perceptual trap. He explained to her that when she is driving around, and it hits her to go to the mall and shop, she should stop and shift perception instead to something more life-sustaining, such as spending time with her kids and spouse, or going to the gym and doing something nice for her body. Dr. Phil explains that each person has sovereignty over his/her perception. So if life, relationships or anything else is not working for you, then you and only you can shift your perception to something that does work.
All of our suffering is held together by our perception or mis-perception of self and what is. Right relationship with perception is an inner event. It happens in the Heart, not the head. Right relationship with perception has nothing to do with the body’s physical visual ability. Perception based on what we think and believe, based on mind the projections of mind we are here to get over, is the basis of mis-perception or polluted thinking. Unrealized waves are coming from the head and not the Heart, so the perception of self and what is becomes highly distorted and extremely limited. All unrealized waves perceive no hope, no possibility for growth, no good faith in life and love in their story about what is.
Once again, that is why the third rock from the Sun is here, so that we can as spiritual creatures have a place to come to practice right relationship with perception. This is the place in the universe to come and practice realizing what you are dong with your attention, because this is where we feel it. Having to feel the quality of our perceptions is the lesson we came here for. Most of us re-create very confining perceptual stories that keep us living narrow and severely restricted lives, compared to our potential as God conscious made manifest. Most of us live our perceptual lives within “the box” of duality. Perception is like a stamped envelope. We could perceptually live on the envelope that has the potential to go anywhere at anytime. But instead we choose perceptually to live on the stamp, and we let the “stamped perception” define our value, power and worth and tell us where we can do and when. How does one free oneself from the limiting perception that one is not even aware is holding them hostage?
The following is a delightful story about an old frog who lived in a dark well, who is visited by an old frog who lived in the ocean. This story is from Sogyal Rinpoche’s book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying?
“Where do you come from?” asked the frog in the well.
“From the great ocean,” he replied.
“How big is your ocean?”
“It’s gigantic.”
“You mean about a quarter of the size of my well here?”
“Bigger.”
“Bigger? You mean half as big?”
“No, even bigger.”
“Is it…as big as this well?”
“There is no comparison.”
“That is impossible! I’ve got to see this for myself.”
They set off together. When the frog from the well saw the ocean, it was such a shock that his head just exploded into pieces.
We are just like the old well frog. We are so familiar with living in the dark hole of our perceptions – that we are the body, money, experiences, thoughts, and emotions, all things limited – that when confronted with the truth that we are in fact love, that we are in fact God consciousness realizing itself, our head just explodes into a million pieces.
The good news is that it is not up to the government, it is not up to large corporations, it is not up to your family or co-workers to create a life worth living from the power of right relationship with perception. It is up to you. No one can eat for you. No one can sleep for you. No one can breathe for you. And no one can watch your mind for you. No one else can shift your perception from temporal to eternal, from lies to truth, except you. You re-created all your limiting perceptions. Therefore only you can create an end these limitations. It is up to you, and what you are freely giving your attention to on a moment-to-moment basis. No matter where you go or what you do, you cannot escape the truth: you are what you love and you love whatever you are giving your attention to.
Perception is as unique and imaginative as whatever you are giving your attention to and choose to love. You cannot change your life for the better without changing your outdated illusions. You cannot change your outdated illusions without changing what you are giving your attention to. Perception…Change…Growth. They are all perceptual choices. The illusory perception tree produces only illusory fruit. You will find nothing life-sustaining there, only the un-ripe fruit of greater disappointment.
We have all experienced the magical healing qualities of perception. Everyone has met someone for the first time that initially did not appear very attractive. However, over time you see and share their Ruling Love, and you grow to deeply love the person as authentically beautiful. Historically speaking Quasimodo and the elephant-man were perfect examples of this.
You also know the opposite. You meet someone who appears in the temporal world to be very attractive. But over time you see their Ruling Love. They are strongly loyal to hell and inflicting pain. When this happens, the initial illusory perception falls away and the other person is then seen for the true ugliness that they give their attention to. It is then that we honestly perceive the deformed nature of the other. It is the Ruling Love of each wave that ultimately determines our perception of ugly or beauty in ourselves and everything and everyone around us.
You are your perception. Not just physically or mentally, but emotionally as well as metaphorically. The ultimate goal of all self-witnessing, and the purpose behind all of the created reality is to master clear perception. Divine intelligence has given us all free will in our use of perception. You choose your perception and you are One with your choice. Due to the divine law that you are what you love and you love whatever you are giving your attention to, everything in this world is going to continue to go out of its way to keep you honest about what you are doing with your love. Contemplate this the next time your perception informs you that you have no value, power or worth. Not exactly a program you want repeated on the “inner syndicated” airwaves.
To establish right divine relationship with perception, look back to Swedenborg. When he was alive, people would ask him, “What do you do to be such an actualized person?” Swedenborg would tell them, “It has nothing to do with doing. It is not a doing thing.” It is a remembering to give attention to truth, and forget everything else, it is a perceptual thing.
To Be or Not to Be in the Present moment.
The world at large values, even worships doing. The world perceives doing as the highest purpose of all created life. We reflect that perception back to ourselves in our language. We ask children, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” The first bit of information we get from people we meet for the first time is, “What do you do for a living?” We have a bad habit of measuring our happiness by what we can and cannot do. We perceive advancing age with great fear of all the things we may lose the ability to do. We as individuals, as a nation, as a planet, loving giving endless attention to doing and the value of doing. Anyone who has ever spent more than five minutes in America knows that American worships productivity. In America if you do not work unrealistically hard at doing something, if you are not producing, you are dead weight. Goals and quotas are the name of the game, and your worth is only as good as the last thing you produced.
Being Simple – Simple Being. – Argisle
The Eastern perception of mind, Ayurvedic psychology and Taoism, suggests a completely different perception on doing. These masters suggest that being is a higher state of mind than doing. Being in the present moment with an open Heart is the very purpose and nature of mind dreaming itself in a material arena. We are human beings not human doings. Nothing will ultimately work for us until we surrender to being here now. These ancient philosophies indicated that there is a way to stop all the problems and limitations, struggles and suffering. There is a way to simply end these in our lives. There is a way to create a final resolution to the on-going drama. How? To be. The instant we are willing to be with what is in the present moment, we are in a the feeling place, the Heart, not the doing place, the head. This is a self-corrective place, the place where the human and the divine become One.
Ayurveda and Taoism warn us that all of the most menacing acts against life and love happen in the name of defending what we think and believe, and in the name of doing. Why did Hitler do what he did? To become the next world leader, of course. Why did Charles Manson do what he did? To lead what he thought and believed was the next Cultural Revolution. Why do large corporations squeeze the lifeblood out of their employees, and then fire them when their bodies can’t keep up with the pressure? Why do they replace these loyal workers with someone half their age at half the salary? It is done in the name of productivity – becoming more work efficient and cost effective. That is all that matters. It is truly an ugly attack on equability. This vicious cycle of ignorance and pain will unendingly feed upon itself until doing perception is broken.
We have discussed at length the disease of duality. This disease infects our perception. Once the disease enters mind through the doorway of perception, it then immediately infects the frontal lobe with deep loyalty to subject/object orientation. I am over here- the subject. And everything not me is the object. A wave must be giving attention to duality; it must love subject/object in order to develop such a strong and abiding love for doing. In order to do there must be a you to start the action, and an object in order to for the doing action to become complete. If there is no subject/object, no duality, there would be no love for doing or doing to become. Instead everything would simply be about being here now.
No wave can serve two masters. A wave cannot be giving attention to being and doing at the same time. The Eastern studies of mind say that being is One with eternal consciousness. Doing is one with the ego. The ego wants, needs to do. Without doing how could the ego tyrannize you with not good enough, and did not do it right? Doing is how we define our value, power and worth. Doing is the camouflage we wear to distract us from how we are treating other people. After all, isn’t getting the job done more important than how we treat others and ourselves in the process? Doing is the doorway to hell that comparison and judgment charge right through. We have trained the ego that we will rely on doing to define our identity. The ego will decide according to when and how the doing gets done what value, power and worth we are allowed to accept, if any. Doing gets more attention than sex. There is something just not right about that.
Doing to become is our very most beloved demon of destruction. If the purpose of life were doing to become, then every workaholic in history of mankind would have reached enlightenment by now. But as we have all noticed, it does not happen that way. No one could produce enough temporal anything to evolve their way into an eternal place like Heaven. We did not come here to do things in our mind. We came here to be with our mind. We did not come here to do things to our relationships. We came here to be with our relationships. It is in being with what is in the present moment with an open Heart that true enlightenment is realized. Jesus did not come to the planet to model doing for us. He came here to model being with what is in the present moment with an open Heart. He came here to model an inner space of complete innocence form any thought or belief.
In the life of the historic Buddha, when he left home, he scaled the walls of the palace leaving behind his wife, children and his parents, the King and Queen. The Buddha set forth upon a path of full awakening. The journey he set upon had nothing to do with doing. That is what he left behind. That is the false king he would not serve. This is the first thing he separated from his attention. The Buddha’s path was bout being fully awake, not doing to become fully awake. The famous Tibetan Buddhist master Sogyal Rinpoche says it like this, “When you realize the nature of the mind, layers of confusion peel away. You don’t actually ‘become’ a Buddha, you simply cease, slowly to be deluded.
I M Perfect lady 